Saturday, December 18, 2010

Our pal Pat at Bomp sent the following this morning. What can I say? Such good advice is now missing from this planet.1. Listen to the birds.That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.2. Your guitar is not really a guitar Your guitar is a divining rod.Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.3. Practice in front of a bushWait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.4. Walk with the devilOld Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out.If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.6. Never point your guitar at anyone.Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.7. Always carry a church keyThat's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrumentYou need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.9. Keep your guitar in a dark placeWhen you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.10. You gotta have a hood for your engineKeep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

Friday, December 17, 2010

When I stumbled across this on the web, it looked vaguely familiar. Then I realised why. Back in Detroit in the 1970s, in a bar with Boss Goodman and Brother Wayne Kramer, I accidently took far too much really bad PCP thinking it was cocaine. In a subsequent dream/hallucination/nightmare, I found myself in a pod very like this. I assumed I’d died and reverted to the basic DNA helix. Later I woke up and everyone was very pissed off with me. Seemingly I had not been a quiet corpse.

“Environmentalists might just approve of this cheap housing, a mobile egg-shaped home covered in bamboo and grass seed-filled burlap sacks. But will it catch on as a real living space? Dai Haifei, a 24-year-old Beijing architect who developed the egg home, had been living in it on a sidewalk in the high-rent Chinese city for almost two months, until it was ordered removed by city managers who said it didn't conform to housing standards, according to the Beijing Review. The 6-foot-high, solar-powered home is just big enough for a small bed and a tiny dresser. Pegs hanging on the wall can hold books and articles of clothing. Although there's no kitchen, a water pump system stored under the bed can keep water for basic washing for about three days. There doesn't seem to be signs of a toilet, but perhaps a pot works just fine.”Click here for more."

Thursday, December 16, 2010

The following was supplied by our pal Heathcote. We should give Comrade Hudson a rebel medal.

“Gaining access to a maintenance control room, Lloyd Hudson, 35, from Ilford, Essex, was able to locate the chart and corresponding switches for Harrods’ 10,000 external lights. Barricading himself in, Hudson disabled the correct lights until he could spell out his feelings to Harrods bosses and Christmas shoppers alike. He was removed by security guards after an hour-long stand-off, then handed over to police. “He had drunk the best part of two bottles of whisky,” said a spokesperson for the iconic London store, “and it’s that kind of behaviour that got him the sack in the first place.” Hudson has since been released on police bail. Knightsbridge visitors were stunned and sensitive Americans became quite bent out of shape. “Honestly, I am disgusted, ” said Irene Rider, 59, from Gary, Indiana. “I was with my grandchildren. We had just gotten off the bus. I said ‘look everybody’ and pointed up to the lights – but you know what the lights said? They said fuck off. And that is not an appropriate message for a child. At least not at Christmas time.”

Tomorrow night (Friday) I’ll be on TV in the UK. The show is called Festival Britannia, and it airs on BBC4 at 9.00 pm. According to the advance promo it’s a study of the evolution of open air rock festivals from the chaotic tribal gatherings of the 1960s and 1970s, to the consumer, music industry garden parties they are today, used as some kind of microcosmic metaphor for changes in society. I missed the advanced screening so I can’t comment, but those who saw it say I’m all over the allotted time space. Which, aside from my ego basking in the all screen radiation and facetime, might actually be interesting. Back in the day I gave a lot of though to the festival as a metaphor, especially after organizing Phun City. And those thoughts, and possible metaphors were, of course, the foundations of my first novel…

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A few months ago, a movie director called Kris Hipps emailed me to ask if she could make a short independent film based my old Tijuana Bible song/poem “Memphis Psychosis.” My response was “Why the hell not?” Since then the project has progressed with a will of it’s own. (Although I’m giving all input asked.) So far a teaser video – which features the Russ Meyer looking ladies above – accompanies the following pitch for funding. This all promises to be great fun. I wish I was twenty five again.

“HOW IT STARTED A few years ago, while browsing through a second-hand music store, I picked up a CD called “Tijuana Bible” - a collection of songs and beat poetry pieces by an artist named Mick Farren. My favorite was a piece called “Memphis Psychosis”, the story of a trip to Graceland gone hellishly and hilariously wrong due to a handful of pills purchased in the restroom of a diner. For years I dreamed of putting this piece to film, and after founding PaperCat Films in 2009, decided to go out on a limb and contact Farren through his blog. He responded almost immediately, and our project was launched. WHAT WE NEED “Memphis Psychosis” is currently in production, and preliminary shooting has begun, but as a small independent company, naturally we could use some help in the financing department, to pay for travel expenses to England to interview Mick for the documentary section of the piece, editing costs, and festival entry fees. WHO IS MICK FARREN? After I started communicating with Mick, I realized what an amazing life he’s led, and decided to extend the piece to a short film within a documentary on the life and times of Mick Farren –British counterculture icon, musician, political activist, prolific sci-fi/horror author (the popular Victor Renquist vampire novels) and columnist for the Los Angeles City Beat. His musical creds include the British psych rock band “The Deviants, and the proto-punk band The Pink Fairies, and his popular solo album “Vampires Stole my Lunch Money” featuring Chrissie Hynde. So far we’re having a blast with this project, and Mr. Farren has been more than accomodating. He is one very cool guy. As the protagonist, “Pilgrim” states in the piece, “I was in the mood for conspicuous consumption, and the ghost of Elvis was at my shoulder”.

Yesterday Gary Hill posted video from 1967 video on Facebook in which the late lamented John Peel interviews me for a Dutch TV station about IT, the underground press and The Deviants. Strange to encounter one’s younger self coming back at you. Although I’m surprisingly lucid and even relevant, there are moments when I find the 24 year-old me a little scary. The idealistic determination of this radical youth seems very serious. It was a time, though, before the shitstorm still to come, when so much still seemed possible and the future might really be bright ahead. I guess I had yet to discover how reversals – and ducking and diving to survive them – can make a sense of humor so crucial. (And watch how the sexist egomaniac doesn't let Joy get a word in edgewise.)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

“Traditional lines of communication between the people and the press have fallen into such disrepair in America that a whole new approach is necessary to challenge the military-industrial-governmental complex, according to a former CIA analyst sympathetic to WikiLeaks. "The Fourth Estate is dead," Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "The Fourth Estate in his country has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus. Captive! So, there is no Fourth Estate." McGovern explained that the term the "Fourth Estate," known today as the news media in the US, was first coined by 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. Burke is said to have pointed to the balcony in Parliament and lauded the print media of his day for being the safeguards of democracy. "Luckily, there is a Fifth Estate," McGovern said. "The Fifth Estate exists in the ether. It’s not susceptible of government, of corporations, or advertisers or military control. It’s free. That is very dangerous to people who like to make secrets and to make secret operational things. It’s a huge threat. And the Empire – the Goliath here – is being threatened by a slingshot in the form of a computer and a stone through these emissions thrown into the ether to our own computers.”Click here for more.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Our pals at Delancey Place sent this small nugget, suggesting that maybe a kind of revolution can flourish from the smallest seed. (Watch out for that little fucker bottom right. Potential Charlie Starkweather-style mass murderer?)

“The pre-teen boys who starred in The Mickey Mouse Club defied the wishes of the show's producers and tilted their Mouseketeer caps back to show off their golden pompadours. Then, as usual, one of the paunchy Mickey Mouse Club producers would come along and flatten the twelve-year-old Mouseketeer's coif with one glunk of his black-winged beanie straight onto the top of his head, suctioning it to his cranium and cutting a line across his eyebrows as if, perhaps, his brain might come off with it if squeezed tightly enough. A guy could have the coolest hair in town, but no one would know about it if he wore his Mouseketeer cap according to regulation. This fact alone made many of the older, teenage boys among The Mickey Mouse Club's two dozen cast members hate those ears that would become such icons of the 1950s. Pompadours were the rage. The guys had to have their waves out. The solution: the boys would act like they were going along with the producers' ridiculous rules until the last second before shooting started, then sneak the cap back two inches or so, just as cameras started to roll, pushing as much hair as possible forward with it to approximate a decent wave. It was the dawn of the rock 'n’ roll era, and hair was a priority.” Jennifer Armstrong – “Why? Because We Still Like You” (Grand Central)

Sunday, December 12, 2010

To employ a tried and true, but maybe tired, cliché, I woke up this morning. It was much earlier than I intended, and found I myself suffering a certain disorientation as the transition from the madness of the USA to madness of Merry Old England continued the spontaneous rewiring of my consciousness. And that’s no fucking fun when find yourself all alone in loveless, old-fool isolation with a cat that eats Weetabix. Thus I could only do the sensible thing and resort to the ever reliable hash pipe so kindly provided by a kind friend and filled by another.